Everyone Dies in the End #2

Luke

Private First Class Luke Seajak crouched among the withered cornstalks, their discolored leaves gray-black in the inky night. Normally the corn would be in its second season, the ears ready for picking, and the early autumn air would be heavy with the thick aroma of wet bark, falling leaves, and cow dung, but these weren’t normal times. Normal times had ended a little over two months ago. And the corn stalks were dead and dry. And the air smelled of decay.

But Luke wasn’t. Dead that is. And neither was Corporal John Hudgins, his squad leader, if you could call the two of them a squad. Seajak thumbed the switch on the side of his night vision goggles, or NVGs, and focused on Hudgins creeping toward the farmhouse. The corporal, a grainy green in the NVGs, stopped at the dwelling’s door. The farmhouse was out of Charleston’s blast zone and looked to be in good shape, the roof over the door still shingled, some of the windows unbroken.

Hudgins dropped to one knee and waved Seajak forward. A short dash and three hard breaths later Seajak knelt beside his squad leader. “Cover me,” Hudgins whispered.

Seajak switched off the NVGs. They wouldn’t help if they found trouble in the house. Gun flashes would quickly wash them out. He tucked his shotgun to his shoulder and sited the door.

Seajak didn’t know what to expect. Five months ago the world was simpler and a lot less radioactive. The Americans were the good guys, the Soviets were the bad guys, and that was that. Now, however, that was no longer that. Yeah, the Soviets were still the enemies, but the chance of running into the Spetsnaz, was remote. The chance of running into gangers, bandits, or just plain bad hombres, was not.

Hudgins turned the knob and pushed the door away from him, immediately pulling his M16 to his shoulder as he stepped into the room. The corporal twisted one way and then another. Seajak ignored the thin trickle of sweat tracing a cold thin line over his temple, focusing the shotgun’s sight on the dark room beyond Hudgins. He saw nothing.

Hudgins dropped his hand from the trigger and motioned Seajak into the room behind him. It stank, stank like decay. Seajak wasn’t surprised. Neither spoke, not yet. A flick of Hudgins’ hand directed Seajak into the hall leading to the bedrooms, the squad leader crept toward the kitchen—at least if the pans hung on the wall were indication of the room’s use.

Two minutes later Seajak met him there, relaxed, his boots loud on the empty tiles. He had found the smell, an elderly couple dead in each other’s arms. Dead and smelly, they would need to drag them outside. At least there was a window in the old folk’s room. Seajak guessed they could dump them through the window. They wouldn’t bury them. Why bury these two and leave the other million-plus South Carolina corpses to rot in the sun? It was best just to get out of the Carolinas and leave it to the dead.

Hudgins’ wiped his face with his free hand, “This will do for tonight. Let’s grab some shut eye.” Seajak thought Hudgins was too loud, and meant to tell him, but right then the door opened.

Seajak froze as Hudgins snapped his M16 to his shoulder, the tip of the barrel barely a hand’s breadth from a dark-clothed, medium build man.

“I hoped I would find something to eat up here.”

The dark-clothed man didn’t sound as if he was making small talk, his voice was threatening, inherently threatening, like the cock of a gun. Hudgins didn’t move. Seajak moved. Slowly, so slowly as to not attract the stranger’s attention his lifted his shotgun.

The man reached for Hudgins’ M16’s barrel and pushed it toward the floor. Still Hudgins didn’t move, or at least he didn’t move any more than was required to let the man push his barrel down. What the hell was wrong with Hudgins?

Screw this! Seajak pressed the shotgun against the intruder’s temple.

“You can eat this.” Seajak pulled the trigger.

It was loud, loud and bright, both effects stunning Seajak for a beat of his heart. Another beat and Hudgins switched on his barrel-mounted flashlight. He swept it across the crumpled, lifeless form on the floor. The tile was covered with its blood. Dark, black blood. Not the blood of a ganger, a bandit, or just a plain bad hombre. Not the blood of a human.

Slowly Hudgins advanced to open door, the flashlight spearing the darkness with its light. Seajak jacked another round into the shotgun and risked a quick look around the kitchen, taking in the smooth tile counters, hung pans, refrigerator—it was just a kitchen. The room smelled of the refrigerator’s spoiled food and the dead guy’s split blood, but the room was just a kitchen with a dead guy on the floor.

The stairs creaked. Hudgins screamed. “Shit, Holy shit!” His M16 spoke, its rapid popping reminding Seajak of exploding bubble wrap, the bullets slapping the stairway wall. Something flew out of the door, illuminated by the strobing light of the M16’s discharge, and into Hudgins. Both flew back into the far side of the kitchen. Pots and pans clattered to the floor and the flashlight tilted crazily.

Seajak swung the shotgun, looking for a shot, but there wasn’t a shot to be had, just a struggling pair of bodies. The struggle didn’t last long. Again the M16 popped, but stopped abruptly, the stopping punctuated with a scream—long, terrified, and full of pain, ending in a wet gurgle. The crazily titled flashlight went dark.

Something dark flashed by the wall window, something that moved too fast to be Hudgins. Seajak squeezed the trigger, the shotgun boomed, the window shattered, but after that silence. No moaning from Hudgins. Seajak didn’t know if he could moan anymore. No sound from Seajak’s assailant. Seajak crept toward the window. The smell of blood nauseated him, the coppery scent mixing with the burnt-rubber stench of the spent shotgun shells. Beneath it all Seajak smelled fear, the trace of stale sweat mixed with fresh, the odor of bowels released, the reek of trepidation. Although it was dark outside the window, it was less dark than the black kitchen. The blast, or something after the blast, had blown the window out of its frame, and it lay on the ground below, shattered glass duly gleaming in the weak light. There was nothing else. Slowly, shotgun still tucked to his shoulder, Seajak leaned out of the window, leaning first left and then right. In the woods an owl hooted, in Seajak’s head his breathing sounded like a hurricane. He saw nothing; perhaps there was nothing to be seen.

“Looking for me?”

The voice was deep, the accent untraceably European, the location just behind his ear. His right ear to be precise. He spun, pulling up his shotgun as he did.

Hudgins’ assailant, at least that was who Seajak assumed it was, did, indeed, stand right behind him. At least that was where he started. It moved with uncanny speed, and its arm darted to the shotgun, ripped it from Seajak grasp, and threw it against the fall wall.

Seajak wasn’t a coward, but neither was he a fool. No weapon equaled no chance. He threw himself out of the window, but never made it.

A hand like a vise closed on his ankle, stopping him mid leap, his torso dangling in the cooling night air, his legs flailing in the kitchen. The vise like hand jerked and Seajak was back on the floor, lying on the tiles thick with blood. He tried to roll away from the figure looming above, but now the impossibly strong hand gripped his throat, pinning him to the tiles, and the shadow resolved into a face, a face he had only seen in his childhood nightmares, a pale, leering face. It was almost human, human except for the burning crimson eyes, and the impossibly long canines. Seajak wanted to scream, but had no air, the hand was crushing his windpipe.

The face leaned close, its nose almost toughing Seajak’s. He could smell its foul breath, and it reminded him of his own rotten breath after last month’s oral surgery. It was a strange thought.

“You killed Nathan.” The voice was low, clicking as if words were strange to the mouth. “Now I kill you.” Somehow it didn’t feel right, thought Seajak, he couldn’t die like this, without a word, without a meaning, but the thing’s knife-like finger nails sliced his throat, spilling Seajak’s life blood on the already slick floor, and without a word, without a meaning, Seajak died.